‘I’m very impulsive’: Why this American woman moved to France at the age of 70

Janice Deerwester speaks about her travel story to France. (Janice Deerwester via CNN Newsource).

She’d dreamed of living in France for years, but according to Janice Deerwester, originally from Texas, life always seemed to get in the way.

In 2021, Janice, who has been a widow since 2012, found herself lying on her bed with the lyrics to “Is That All There Is?,” a song about dissatisfaction that was a hit for country singer Peggy Lee back in 1969, playing in her head.

“I hated that song when it came out, but all of a sudden it came to my mind,” Janice, who was based in Georgia at the time, tells CNN Travel. “I thought, ‘Is this all there is?’ I work, come home tired. I get up. Is this it?”

‘Impulsive’ decision

Realizing that she wanted more from life, Janice decided there and then that she would relocate to Fontainebleau — the French town she’d had her heart set on since a 2018 visit. Less than a year later, at the age of 70, she did just that.

“I’m very impulsive so that kind of followed the rule,” she adds.

Now happily settled in Fontainebleau, located southeast of Paris, Janice feels that she “made the best choice ever” and is incredibly grateful to be living out her fantasy.

“I am the luckiest woman I feel that ever was,” she says. ”And why I have this, and why I was given this, I have no idea. But I’m just blessed every day that I get to live here.”

Janice goes on to explain that she wasn’t necessarily unhappy back in Georgia, and enjoyed living on a horse ranch in the country, which she had been renting since selling her home, but was overcome with the feeling that “there’s got to be more” to life.

Despite being retired, she was working two jobs to fill her time and worried that she’d get to “that home” one day and ask, “Why in the heck did you not go to France?”

Once she’d made the decision to relocate, Janice called her daughter, Jennifer, who was in her early 20s at the time, to tell her the news.

Although Jennifer was initially hesitant of the idea, Janice says she was eventually very supportive.

“She said, ‘You’ve done everything for me,’” Janice recounts. “’Go do what you want to go do.’ I said, ‘Hey, that sounds good to me.’ So that’s what I did.”

While Janice had initially envisioned living in an apartment with a spiral staircase, she soon realized that this wouldn’t be possible as she had a procedure on her knee in 2021.

“I needed an elevator,” she adds, explaining that she settled on a simpler apartment that she’d originally viewed back in 2018.

Janice then sold her car and got rid of as much of her stuff as she could, putting some things into storage for her daughter.

“If she wanted the china, she could have it,” she says. “If she wanted the silverware and all that kind of stuff. She could have it. If not, she can sell it. I don’t care.”

Bonjour France

According to Janice, a lot of her clothes “went out the door” when she began looking into the way French women dressed and realized that” they don’t walk down the street in leggings.”

Janice also applied for a visitor’s visa, which would permit her to remain in France for between three to 12 months. In February 2022, she left the US, bringing along her elderly dog Buster and her cat Kitty.

“I had three suitcases, and honestly, one was almost all shoes,” she says.

Her daughter came with her, as “you can’t bring two animals yourself,” and they flew from Atlanta to New York and then New York to Paris.

“I thought it’d be easier on the animals,” she adds. “It was more traumatic for me, and they were just fine.”

Janice admits she struggled during her first few days in France, and began to wonder whether she’d made a big mistake.

“I just broke down and started crying,” she recalls. “And I said, ‘I miss my yellow tennis shoes…’ Of course, that’s a euphemism. I just don’t know if I belong here or not.”

Janice says that her mood started to improve after she had a good night’s sleep and did some furniture shopping. But it took a while for her to feel settled.

Looking back on those initial few months in France, Janice admits that she found simple things like going to the grocery store highly stressful.

“I’ve never been shy, but I was always afraid when I checked out that I wasn’t going to have the money, or the card wouldn’t work or something,” she admits.

“And I would be embarrassed, and they would say, ‘Well, stupid Americans.’ And I did that for almost a year. I stressed out when I went to the store.”

As time went on, Janice began to feel more and more comfortable and built a strong network of friends in France.

On the advice of one of her friends, she launched a YouTube channel, Janice in France, which now has nearly 30,000 subscribers, chronicling her adventures in the European country.

“I enjoy it very much…” she says. “It gives me a purpose.”

Finding purpose

Janice, who has a master’s degree in counseling, also facilitates a group focused on topics such as aging, being separated from families and grief.

“I know what it’s like to have no one to talk to,” she adds, explaining that she also spends a lot of time working with her church, and has hosted Christmas parties at her home for those who are alone during the festive season.

“We need to give back,” she says. “I try to give back in my community. I try to give back at the church. If someone is sick, I try to help.

“We just need to give back. We need to have a purpose in life. I just can’t get up in the morning and play with the dog and turn on the iPad and watch YouTube all day.

“There has to be more in life. So, YouTube has given me that (purpose). But if I didn’t have it, I probably would know French better.”

While she takes language lessons, Janice admits that her French hasn’t improved much during the three years that she’s been living in the European country.

She explains that she doesn’t always get a chance to speak the language, as the locals she knows are often keen to practice their English with her.

“Of course, my French in the southern accent is horrible anyway,” she jokes, noting that she’s able to get by and “can pretty much read signs to tell me if I’m about to fall in a ditch.”

“I’m still trying to learn the language, but I live in a beautiful town where the people are so very kind to me.”

In fact, one of the things Janice loves most about living in Fontainebleau is the kindness of the people.

“I can get on the train, and if it’s crowded, I guess because I’m older — I don’t think I’m older, but they think I’m older I guess — they get up and give me their seat…” she says, adding that the same thing happens when she rides the bus “when it’s raining” or “too darn cold.”

“It’s just like, wow,” she says. “People are so kind.”

Janice points out that Fontainebleau’s close proximity to Paris, which is around an hour away by train, was a major selling point for her on deciding to move there.

She travels to the French capital regularly “for a cup of coffee “ with friends, and is looking forward to an upcoming trip to see the 1964 musical “Hello, Dolly.”

“I love going into Paris…” she says. “But I love my little town.”

Family focus

According to Janice, one of the best things about living in France is the huge focus on family.

“The US is all about the dollar, the almighty dollar,” she says. “France is about family. Time off with their family. Holidays with the family.

“On Monday in my town, and most towns except for Paris, of course. All the banks are closed.”

However, adapting to life over there hasn’t been without its challenges.

For Janice, the much-complained-about French bureaucracy is high on the list.

“Bureaucracy is difficult. But also I can’t just pick up the phone and call them,” she notes, before adding that she’d still waiting for her long-stay visa to come through.

“But, you know, it gets done. I have had people that have called me and said, ‘Janice, I think I want to move there and I want to get a hold of a realtor… and she hasn’t got back to me in two days.’ And I said, ‘Well, she’s probably with her family.”

She notes that if you call a realtor in the US, “they’ll call you back in about an hour and a half to two hours,” but things are very different in France.

“Here it may be two or three days, because you are not priority,” she says. Their family is priority… and what’s going on in their life.”

While she says she doesn’t ever really get lonely, Janice admits that there have been moments where she’s felt “despondent.”

She recalls paying a visit to the Fontainebleau Palace and people watching during a day when she was feeling particularly low.

“I just watched everybody and looked, went and had a hot chocolate and sat there and thought, ‘Okay, I’m done. I’m going home now,’” she says.

“Because I am one that really doesn’t get lonely. I live alone, but I’m not alone.”

She says she recently turned down a marriage proposal “from a young man” who “wanted me to come live with him because we’re getting older and all that.”

“I said, ‘No, no, I’m fine. Thank you,’” she adds.

After three years in France, Janice, now 73, has no plans to return to the US permanently, and believes that she’s “the best person for me” right where she is.

“I couldn’t even imagine moving back to Georgia,” she says. “I mean, ‘Janice in Georgia.’ No. What would I do there?”

She has another dog, Max — Buster passed away last year — and loves the freedom of being able to pretty much do what she wants, when she wants.

While she misses her daughter, as well as Mexican food, Janice says that they talk regularly and Jennifer enjoys coming over to France to visit. Janice’s last trip to the US was two years ago.

“I have to go back in September,” she says, adding that if she had a choice in the matter, she wouldn’t be returning at all.

She points out that she’s already seen much of the US, and is ready for new adventures.

Janice hopes her story will inspire older people to “just live life to the fullest” in whatever way that might mean for them, so that they “don’t end up in a nursing home and go, ‘darn, I wish I had done that.’”

Or perhaps find themselves wondering “is that all there is?”

“Do it now,” she says, stressing that “It doesn’t have to be France.”

“It could be maybe I want to move closer to my kids, or maybe I want to move away from my kids…

“Or maybe I want to take maybe two or three months out of the year… I want to travel.

“People, they get older, I think they get so comfortable where they are that they don’t want to step out of that little safe zone.

“And, man, once you step out of it, it’s so great. It’s awesome.”

Article written by Tamara Hardingham-Gill, CNN